Flyfalcons

I dunno, when I am on the ground and hear an aircraft, I can spot it almost immediately. Just don't be too disappointed when the eyewitness's account turns out to be just about exactly what happened. We haven't come up with new ways to crash singles in a while, and this case will be no exception.

Rest assured that the sound of a rapidly descending aircraft is most capable of traveling through clouds and is audible before said aircraft emerges.

The entire fuselage became the nose of the shuttlecock.

The wings were not detached. They were attached and folded up, creating a significant nose-up condition with all that drag way up high. Half of the horizontal stabilizer, which would help pitch the nose down, was missing. The other half most likely folded up. The plane had experienced a significant structural failure before coming into frame.

Panic pull well above Va is all it takes to end up in a position like this. The Twin Cessna that went down in California somewhat recently played out just like this, except the wing sections fully separated from the aircraft. Come screaming out of the cloud base disoriented, panic pull, wings fail and fuselage continues its downward, suddenly nose-high trajectory. The video of that was painful to watch as well.

You can clearly see the TKS leading edges on both wings.

That's no video artifact.

My '71E is one of them.